December, 2022
I will be frank. I don’t like Lea Michele. I did, once upon a time when I was in high school. I tried watching Glee, and even though I didn’t get very far, for the most part I did enjoy it. Flash forward to 2020. The spread of the Corona Virus created high tensions across the world, and the Black Lives Matter movement was growing in response to the injustices against Black Americans. I was in full support of this movement, in truth how could I not? My youngest sibling is black, and knowing that this was the world that he was heading into was terrifying for me. But I digress. Many public figures were sharing their support of BLM via social media, Michele being one of them. This comment was a surprise to Samantha Marie Ware, Michele’s former Glee castmate, who decided that it was time to break the silence on Michele’s true character. Ware informed the world of Michele’s openly offensive behavior towards her and thought it was funny that Michele was condemning racism considering her horribly racist treatment of Ware. And the rest, as they say, is history.
I’m not here to ramble on about whether or not I believe Lea Michele is racist. Because I honestly don’t know, and likely never will. What I think is safe to say is she’s not a very considerate person. I’m aware that my phrasing here is pretty polite considering the public slander she’s faced for years now. My theater friends and I have often made fun of her, but it’s not because we know better than her or subscribe to all forms of cancel culture (which is really problematic on its own). It’s because we’ve met that kind of person before.
In every theater circuit, there’s that person who’s undeniably talented. However, this person demonstrates some of the most toxic, cutthroat, offensive behavior you’ve ever seen in your life. They messed up a line? It’s because you said yours too soon. You got in their way during a dance number? They give you unsolicited advice without asking if you actually want their help. They’ll try to direct you as if the director isn’t standing right in front of them. They hold up rehearsals, they talk about people in the cast and crew behind closed doors, complain about the costumes, belittle others for not having enough experience or not understanding the material, and the list goes on and on and on.
Everyone who’s ever been in theater has dealt with a “Lea Michele” at some point in their career. It’s inescapable. Someone who believes that they’re more important than you, for seemingly no real reason. The only real reason I can conceive is that they feel threatened by the other performers. The problem with this mindset is that theater doesn’t work like that. As a cast, your job is to work together as a team to make sure the production goes as smoothly as possible, and this goes for principal cast members as well. Everyone has a job to do, and while some appear more important than others, this honestly isn’t the case. I was in a musical once where I was just in the ensemble, but I was in a lot of scenes. In one group number, another ensemble member missed his cue entirely and never came onstage. We managed to recover, but boy was that frustrating. Actors will lose props, they’ll mess up lines, they’re humans. All we can do is fix our mistakes and move on. The most important thing we can do as performers is trust each other, because we have to in order to accomplish the things we’re setting out to do. Putting yourself above others in an environment where you need to rely on one another is setting yourself and your team up for failure. It’s a lesson we’ve been taught a thousand times throughout our lives and hopefully we’ve learned it by the time we die.
The way that I see it, Lea Michele is an incredibly talented performer who was fortunate enough to be given incredible opportunities at a very young age. I think it’s safe to say that her introduction into the world of performance is what led to her expecting a sort of royal treatment wherever she worked, and thus has become known as the diva we see today. I think that the most important thing to take away from this is just know that when you’re working as a part of a team, not only do your job well, but be someone that your team wants to work with. If someone enjoys being around you and knows that they can rely on you to get your job done, then you become valuable to them. You get to be a part of a community and do more of what you love, and to me that’s a really special thing.
– Grace Lafferty
Grace Lafferty 